Yearning for Zion
by InRainville
Summary: Rachel struggles with her beliefs in the aftermath of a worldwide pandemic. Rachel/Finn/Quinn; Brittany/Santana; Kurt/Tina/Mercedes. Reviews appreciated!
1. The Soloist

**Yearning for Zion**

_Disclaimer: Characters are not mine, and belong to their respective owners._

_Spoilers: Nothing substantial from the second half of season 1, nothing at all after "Theatricality"_

1. The Soloist

Rachel Berry Hudson always gets the solo. She's handled lead vocals for the past four years, and the choir behind her has gotten bigger, and the audience has gotten larger. It's exactly what she always wanted.

Or it would be, if they were actually here to see her perform.

She only does religious music, of course, and only on worship days... which used to be only Sunday mornings, but have since expanded to Tuesday and Friday evenings.

She wears a white robe, and underneath that, a loose silk dress that runs to her ankles and de-emphasizes anything approaching a hint of hips or breasts. She wears makeup, which is a luxury these days, and a steady smile for everyone in the congregation. Looking pretty and positive is utterly fitting (if not outright mandatory) for the first wife of young Finn Hudson, a well-respected priesthood holder and a strong candidate for being called west to work directly for the Prophet Henrickson in Utah.

She looks out at the audience and on nearly every one of their faces sees some variation of the same basic feelings: exhaustion, desperation, and hope. A big part of the reason she's standing where she is, wearing what she is, doing what she's doing, is because over the years the hope's become more apparent, and the desperation's subsided a bit. And as long as she gets to continue her work with the Wives' Organizing Committee, she thinks she can keep pushing things in the right direction.

Quinn Fabray Hudson's face is one of the few that stands out in the crowd. She isn't staring ahead in rapt belief, or as if she's waiting for answers or enlightenment to arrive and make everything make sense. Except for the brief seconds it takes for her to turn her head and tell one of the three children next her to settle down, she just stares straight ahead at the altar with almost no expression, except perhaps the slightest hint of a smile. Rachel has always been "cute," or "pretty", but Quinn was and remains outright beautiful, even as she plays the role of Finn Hudson's attentive, supportive second wife.

Quinn is another part of the reason Rachel is where she is, doing what she's doing.

Finn sits on a pew in front of the altar, facing the crowd at an angle; Rachel can still see his face from her position. She searches it for some hint of the goofy, good-hearted, more-than-slightly dim guy she married, but sees only the fine, upstanding religious leader he's become, without a trace of doubt or humility left.

Finn is the reason she's here in the first place, although it's becoming harder for her to remember why.

Rachel finishes her solo. Worship lets out, and all six Hudsons - dad, moms, and three kids - walk home together.


	2. Venus Flu

2. Venus Flu

Deep in her closet, buried in a box of old school books and memorabilia where she's sure Finn will never find it, Rachel keeps a binder of printouts of old web pages and emails that document the true story of the plague as it happened.

She'd started researching the disease with her usual diligence once she and her fathers had suddenly taken ill with it, collecting news stories and medical articles in a separate folder on her computer desktop. A typical story from this time begins:

**Mystery Illness Spreads Rapidly;**

**CDC sees no cause for alarm**

_The US Centers for Disease Control issued a report today evaluating the threat posed by a fast-moving illness currently infecting people in at least 20 Southern and Midwestern states. CDC authorities caution Americans not to panic, saying that the disease, although extremely contagious, does not seem especially virulent._

_"Symptoms include a sudden spike of high fever, soreness in the glands, cramps, nausea, and occasionally blurred vision," the report states. "However, these symptoms are temporary, rarely lasting longer than 48 hours, after which full health is restored. We have found no incidents of death or severe distress associated with this disease at this time."_

_Although the sudden spread of the disease has increased public concerns, medical doctors say the disease may ultimately be of academic interest. "H1N1 influenza and other viruses are primarily communicated through the spread of liquid droplets, from nasal discharge and coughing to the eyes and mouth and nose," said Dr. Alex Sanders of the CDC. "This is interesting because the new virus is apparently hardy enough to stay biologically active outside of a liquid environment - it essentially gets exhaled out as a kind of viral spore and travels on the wind, which is relatively rare as diseases go."_

_No official name for the disease has yet been set, although the name "Venus flu" is quickly climbing in popular usage, as the disease seems to cause more severe and longer-lasting reactions in women..._

Five weeks later, one of her fathers, David, had suddenly taken ill again, his fever hitting 105 and staying there for hours. They'd taken him to the hospital and stayed by his side all night as his temperature held, and then climbed, despite antiviral meds and an ice bath. He died just before dawn, and they went home, stunned.

That evening almost every headline story read similarly:

**"Venus flu" Virus Resurges Across Country**

**Fatal phase two of virus predominantly strikes men; over 60,000 dead, millions at risk**

_In the wake of a sudden epidemic of deaths from the supposedly dormant "Venus flu" virus, the Center for Disease Control issued an emergency alert today for males of all ages who have not yet contracted the virus to go into immediate quarantine._

_"We now understand that the virus enters a weeks-long dormant phase after an initial period of infection in males," said Dr. Anna Kim of the CDC. "After this period, the virus becomes active once more, causing high fevers that we have, as of yet, been able to treat, leading to massive casualties. Preliminary estimates suggest that the virus may reactivate in as many as 70% of males."_

_Authorities say that they are continuing to pursue treatment to prevent the virus from reactivating in dormant cases, but that it is crucial for men who have not yet contracted the first stage virus to get into air-tight isolation as soon as possible. Duct tape, plastic sheeting, and a HEPA air filter can be used to isolate rooms and houses from the virus..._

Three days later, her other father, Steven, became feverish. 911 was down by that point, overloaded past capacity, and the hospital was full. She stayed by his side all day in an overflow tent set up in the hospital parking lot; there were no antivirals or ice baths this time.

She was an orphan by the time the sun set that evening.

Rachel returned home in shock, and did little except obsessively watch TV and surf the web over the next several weeks, even as reports became sketchy and power failed sporadically. The headlines she's saved from this period tell only a fraction of the story, but it's all the narrative she can bear to remember:

Airtight Quarantine Rooms Fail To Protect From Venus Flu

**Venus Flu Spreads Worldwide**

**Demonstrations for Venus Flu Cure Become Riots**

**Venus Flu Runs Course in US;**

**100 million estimated dead from disease, millions more in resulting chaos**

**Cities Empty as Food Deliveries Halt**

**Women's Militias Form on Eastern Seaboard, West Coast**

**Polygamist Splinter Sects on Rise in Utah**

**Venus Flu Causes Widespread Sterility in Women; 1 in 2 affected**

And after that there was no more national news, because there was no more nation to speak of.


	3. Girls' Night In

3. Girls' Night In

Thursday evening Finn goes to the men's leadership circle at the church and leaves the wives at home; Thursday is their night off, when he sleeps in a spare bed in the guest room and Rachel and Quinn sleep alone in their separate rooms.

Thursday is also when Rachel and Quinn put the kids to bed early, break out the booze, get nicely tipsy, and sing.

It is unquestionably the high point of Rachel's week.

Rachel doesn't know where Quinn gets the alcohol from - she guesses the same place Quinn gets the other luxury items that pass through their house now and then, chocolate and coffee and makeup. And she doesn't really want to know. Rachel's days on the WOC are focused on coordinating and allocating and big-picture logistics; maintaining an agricultural base without much in the way of fuel to run the farm machinery is a war, and she's a colonel in that fight. It's a relief that she can let Quinn stay at home and navigate the intricacies of a black market that Rachel can't officially acknowledge, even as she realizes it's an utterly necessary complement to what she's doing.

But all that gets pushed aside when they start drinking moonshine from an unlabeled brown glass bottle, and start on "Oops, I Did It Again".

The stuff in the bottle is _really_ strong.

After a few more songs, they collapse back on the couch, flushed and overheated and a little out of breath, staring up at the ceiling and giggling slightly until Quinn speaks up.

"So... I guess this means no luck this month?"

The silly grin vanishes from Rachel's face and she sighs before answering. "No... no stork in my future, and no worries about me drinking."

Quinn reaches out and takes Rachel's hand in her own, giving it a squeeze but saying nothing, waiting for the inevitable continuation from Rachel.

"It's just as well, you know. It's not like I need to worry about morning sickness while we're dealing with planting, or going into labor next fall during harvest. Really, the _last_ thing I need to worry about now is being pregnant."

"I know, sweetie. Have a little faith, it'll happen someday."

They sit for a few moments in silence, enjoying the buzz and waiting for the room to stop spinning quite so much before Quinn speaks up again.

"I meant to tell you, I ran into Mercedes this afternoon and invited her and Kurt and Tina over for dinner next week. Tuesday, I think."

"Ok, I'll make sure not to work late." Rachel pauses for a moment, and asks "Are they... still considering a third?"

Quinn shrugs. "I didn't ask, and she didn't say anything. I can't imagine they're in a rush though. It can't be easy to find someone they'd trust about Kurt's... about Kurt."

"Yeah..." Rachel pauses again, and presses on. "Has Finn brought up a third with you again?"

Quinn squeezes Rachel's hand again. "He did, but I just made some non-commital noises and he dropped it. Same line as before, more support for you, more help around the house for me, more righteous souls brought into the family, blah blah blah. You know he'll never do anything about it unless we say otherwise, Rach. Don't worry about it."

"Yeah, but... I don't know, maybe we're... I'm... being selfish... He really does think it'll help us, and I know he's getting pressure from the church to take another wife. It wouldn't be _so_ bad, I guess..."

"Hey." Quinn scoots across the couch and moves next to Rachel, putting her arm around her and pulling her close. "Look, you, all by yourself, are all the wife he can handle, and you plus me is more woman than any man deserves. Besides, you and I, we _work_ together. God knows what kind of third he'd end up taking, probably some bubbly little teenage princess that I'd have to babysit in addition to the kids. I don't want to mess up what we've got right now, so we're not going to change anything, ok? Besides, you'll be pregnant one of these days, and as long as he's got two wives giving him kids he'll consider that enough and that'll be the end of it."

Rachel leans in against Quinn and nods, wordlessly, before wiping her eyes and sitting for a few more minutes in companionable silence. She breaks it by turning her head to push against Quinn's shoulder and sniffing.

"That's nice... what is that?"

"Chanel, can you believe it? Somebody traded me an intact bottle for this bag of limes I picked up. After the mall burned down I didn't think there was much left in town, but I guess I lucked out. You want to borrow some?"

Rachel nods, and a sly grin crosses her face. "Maybe. But I think I like it better on you..." She stares intently at Quinn before closing her eyes, and starts to move towards her, slowly, pressing her lips together, heading for a kiss.

Quinn does the same, reaching out with her hand to caress Rachel's cheek and guiding the two of them together until they're no more than an inch apart...

...at which point Rachel's eyes fly open and she bursts out laughing, turning away and shaking her head.

"Yes!" Quinn's fists shoot up in the air and she whoops triumphantly. "Still the queen of gay chicken!"

"Dammit, I'm going to get you one of these days," Rachel says, reaching for the bottle and taking a sip before passing it over to Quinn, who takes a swig and stands up, facing Rachel.

"No you will not, Mrs. Rachel Berry Hudson. Sex might make this marriage easier to deal with, but you and I are both way too straight to even make out with a straight face. The only difference is, I am far more shameless about pushing limits than you will ever be, no matter how drunk you get."

She leans down to hug Rachel and kisses her forehead, then stands up, swaying slightly. "But I love you like a sister and my best friend, and now I have to go to bed. Don't stay up too late, ok? And don't forget to hide the bottle where Finn and the kids won't find it."

Quinn totters off upstairs, one hand tracing the wall in front of her for balance as Rachel watches her go. Then Rachel hides the bottle in the broom closet, behind a plastic bleach bottle, and heads up to bed herself, sighing in disappointment when she realizes she has a whole week left to go before they can do this again.


	4. Gaining My Religion

4. Gaining My Religion

Rachel doesn't remember the details herself, but Finn later told her that she looked like a skeleton when he first knocked on her door in the weeks after the plague. She'd had food in the house due to her fathers buying everything in bulk, she just hadn't been eating very much. She does remember staring at Finn, standing stock still, uncomprehending, for nearly a minute while he talked at her, then breaking down into hysterical tears, grabbing on to him like a vice and not stopping for what seemed like hours.

At least for the two of them, things got better after that. Finn's mother was one of the few women who succumbed to the plague, but between them they had enough food to last for several more weeks. And while Lima might have been a cow town, it was also a safe haven from the chaos other areas of the country had become.

Finn started going out during the day and making contact with friends from school. Puck and Artie had died from the plague, along with Mike and Matt and most of the rest of the football team. Kurt had survived, as had Mr. Schuester. And, of course, the women - Quinn and her daughter, Tina and Mercedes and Brittany and Santana, Ms. Pilsbury and Terri and thousands more throughout town. So many women left alive, and left grieving for sons and fathers and husbands.

So many women left hungry, and growing colder as winter started to set in and the power started to fail in earnest, and fighting started to break out over supplies of food and water and fuel.

Rachel started organizing her small circle of friends without even thinking of what she was doing. Looking back, she wasn't sure if she'd become less abrasive, or people just stopped resisting, but unlike in the early days of glee club people were now willing, even eager, to follow her lead. They pooled food and medicine and other resources, and grouped everyone into common houses for security and to minimize the amount of heating oil they burned through. And her friends brought in their friends and relatives, and they did the same, and before she knew it she and Finn were the ad hoc leaders of a group of nearly four hundred people, huddled together in shock and fear, waiting to see what would happen next.

What happened next was their little group getting by, bit by bit. They traded goods and services with other, similar groups, did what they could to keep infrastructure up and running, and even tried their hands at subsistance farming. And every morning Rachel woke up with a smile and a positive attitude and ran around doing the hundreds of small things she needed to do to keep things running, and every night she went to bed and stayed awake in Finn's arms, increasingly certain they weren't going to make it.

Late that spring a diesel locomotive rolled into town pulling a dozen freight cars behind it, the first train anybody in town had seen in months. It carried a handful of people, and boxes and boxes of supplies - rice and beans, vitamins and antibiotics, even toothpaste and toilet paper. The newcomers set up in an abandoned five-and-dime on Main Street and put out a giant banner in the front: "The New Latter-Day Saints: Help Has Arrived!"

Word quickly got out that the NLDS (which evolved into the deragatory "Noodles" within days) were giving out small amounts of supplies to anyone who came by... but they'd give out significantly more if you were willing to sit through one of their church services, or talk about their religion for a while.

It wasn't long before Rachel and Finn found themselves making their way to the storefront, initially with the idea of making a straight-up trade of gasoline for antibiotics. They left a few hours later with their gas and the medicine, as well as vitamins, tampons, water filters, and a box full of copies of something called the "Revised Book of Mormon," authored by the Prophet Henrickson.

It was pretty silly stuff to Rachel's eyes - a crude mashup of the Old and New Testaments, the Book of Mormon, and some reactionary drivel about the world bringing the "Plague of Purification" on itself because of greed, sexual immorality, etc., etc. Not much different from any wingnut extremist website before or during the plague, but here it was dressed up in fake leather and gold leaf.

She worried, initially, when she visited people's houses and saw copies of the book lying around, half-opened on coffee tables and sitting on bedside night stands. But at the same time, she was mostly relieved that a massive burden had been eased off of her shoulders - kids who'd been fighting infections all winter long were breathing easier, people looked slightly healthier and happier and less exhausted. And when faced with a shortage of something important, rather than starting to panic in fear that there wasn't anything left in all of Lima, her mind continually turned to the church storefront on Main Street.

So she and Finn returned more and more often, each of them drawing something different from their visits. While Finn was taken off to one side and had long conversations with other men about leadership and duty and great works and righteous destiny, Rachel talked with the NLDS women about simple logistics, questions of who needed what how badly and how to best get it to them. And each time they left, they walked out with a little more: starry-eyed belief for Finn, and material help for Rachel.

Finn started going along on door-to-door spiritual outreach tours of Lima, looking dorky-but-cute in a suit and tie, while Rachel stayed behind in the store, not just asking for things now but suggesting and guiding how to best divide the cargo from trains that kept rolling into Lima more and more frequently.

Rachel wasn't sure when she made the decision to embrace the way NLDS ran things without cynicism and second-guessing - perhaps there was no explicit moment of decision so much as a gradual realization that she couldn't keep trying to keep her people safe and fed all by herself.

So she already knew what her answer would be when Finn asked her to marry him the following November. And during the ceremony she the craziness of it all barely registered - the Broadway-loving secular-leaning Jewish girl wedded to a not-so-bright ex-jock evangelist, in a converted storefront according to the bizarre rituals of a religion that hadn't even really existed three years ago.

She simply embraced her new official position within the group, moving from just dispersing the bounty of the trains to actually putting people to work, getting Lima back to, if not self-sufficiency, then at least equal standing in the network of NLDS towns that was springing up across the Midwest.

And if she wasn't an active proselytizer, then she at least didn't make any discouraging noises when friends and acquaintances also started to fall into the NLDS orbit: Mr. Shue and Ms. Pilsbury, Tina and Mercedes and Kurt, and Quinn and her baby daughter.

By the time Finn proposed adding Quinn to the marriage, the polygamy aspect of the NLDS seemed so normal and common-sense that it didn't occur to her to argue; in fact, she and Quinn had come to the same decision between themselves long before Finn said anything. It was a positive joy to watch Quinn's daughter Beth grow up in their house, and a huge relief to have a friend and ally waiting for her at home at the end of the day, regardless of whether Finn was working late that night or not.

It became easier for Rachel to see all of Lima as part of the church, and to ignore the parts that weren't. Quinn managed some delicate negotiations, setting up Will and Emma to bring Terri into their marriage, then Tina and Mercedes married to Kurt. It felt right and proper to see the weddings happen and everything come together, and she barely noticed at all as she saw Santana and Brittany less and less (despite Quinn's occasionally pointed comments) and then, not at all.

Three years after the plague more than three quarters of Lima was NLDS, and Rachel began to sing in public again, in front of the choir.


	5. Meet the Hummels

5. Meet the Hummels

Tuesday evening Rachel answers the door and all at once there's a pile of hugs and kisses and hellos as Rachel and her family greet Kurt and his family; six adults, five kids and two babies, all clustered together in Rachel's front hallway until she can herd them all to the kitchen and the living room.

After a while, the wives congregate in the kitchen, fixing food and keeping one eye on the kids running around underfoot while Kurt and Finn are in the living room talking shop. Kurt took over his father's auto repair business, and he's done great work at fixing car engines for those who have the gas to burn, and building rugged, reliable bicycles and tricycles for those who don't.

Still, as Rachel stands at the kitchen door looking in on them, she's constantly amazed that Finn seems entirely unable to read Kurt's face when anything even remotely related to marriage or sex comes up. It seems like anyone should be able to see his expression - a mixture of amusement and incredulity that Finn apparently can't tell that Kurt is still screamingly gay, "treatments" and "spiritual transformations" be damned. Or perhaps Finn does know, and is simply pretending not to see, in which case perhaps Kurt's just astounded that he has to go through the rest of his life living such a transparent charade.

Then again, Rachel remembers times back in high school when she was too self-centered and oblivious to read expressions, not just Kurt's but those of almost everyone around her. And, instead of feeling satisfied that she's learned better by now, she just feels sad that it's taken her this long to really see what was going on.

Back in the kitchen she catches the tag end of a conversation, Tina saying "...and she's the result of some old _Playgirls_ and a do-it-yourself insemination kit, just like her sisters and brother, but we love her anyway, don't we? Yes we do! Oh yes we do!" And Tina lifts her baby daughter up in the air and spins her around, grinning hugely as the baby giggles.

Mercedes chops carrots and onions with blinding speed and unflinching accuracy. "Not how I thought my babies would come around, but at least we can still have them..." she freezes a moment as she realizes Rachel's in the room with them, then smiles and raises her knife in salute. "Hey Rachel! Beef stew for dinner tonight!"

"Sounds wonderful, Mercedes," Rachel says, putting on a big smile and heading towards Tina, who hands her child over for Rachel to hold and coo over.

Tina walks over beside Mercedes and puts a hand on her shoulder. "So, we have some news to tell you guys..."

Quinn rolls her eyes and turns back to stirring the pot on the stove. "Another kid? Mercedes, that's three in the past three years for you two!"

Tina shakes her head. "No, it's..."

Mercedes cuts in. "We're adding a third wife."

There's a moment of silence as both Rachel and Quinn stop what they're doing and glance at each other, then resume bouncing the baby and stirring the pot.

"How are... are you sure that's wise?" Rachel asks, quietly. "I mean, Kurt can always deny being... you know... as long as the two of you back him up. But someone who doesn't... understand, if she says something..."

"He could be taken away," Quinn states firmly. "It's not like the old days when they just didn't let gays into the church. If a wife of Kurt's makes a complaint to the bishop, they can take him away for re-education. And that's the good scenario. They could just exile him entirely, and take the repair shop, and reassign you and your kids to supposedly more _righteous_ men," she spits.

She turns back from the stove towards Mercedes and Tina, slamming her hand down on the kitchen island. "Why on earth would you risk what you have like this? Kurt is _gay_, what _possible_ need could he have for a third wife?"

Mercedes looks utterly unfazed, and Tina clears her throat and answers. "She's not for Kurt. She's for me."

Rachel speaks up timidly, "Tina, I didn't know you were... I mean, I didn't think you liked..."

Tina shrugs. "I didn't know I was either... I mean, I still might not be. Things are so nuts, I can't even tell; there was only ever Artie before the Flu, and then there was nobody until Kurt. And I love Kurt, but..."

She sighs. "Her name's Angela, we met last year when I was working on one of Kurt's assembly lines. She's nice, and she makes me laugh, and... she's not married and I like her and trust her and I want to be with her, and if jumping through these stupid hoops is the only way that can happen... it just makes sense, ok? "

Mercedes speaks up. "I'm happy for Tina, and we all like Angela, but there's more to it than that. A lot of the important people in town that Kurt deals with are up to their third wives. It's supposed to be sacred or celestial or some bullshit like that, but it's really just a way of marking how long you've been in the church and that you have enough money to support three wives and a bunch of kids. It's good for Kurt's business, and what's good for that is good for all of us."

"I don't think... that's not true," Quinn says. "Finn's as important as anybody in Lima, and we haven't had to get a third...

Mercedes snorts. "Wake up, girl! Every day Finn _doesn't_ get a third wife, the rest of the men in the church wonder what's wrong with him. There are single women throwing themselves at him, there are church elders trying to set him up with their daughters or sisters... he'd probably be in Utah right now, going through training to be a bishop and run his own crappy little town if they didn't think he was too weak to tell his wives that he's taking a third."

The baby starts to cry, and Tina takes her from Rachel, making shushing noises and rocking her back and forth. Mercedes continues, gesturing with her knife towards Quinn and Rachel. "Look, we may be bonded for all eternity to a gay man, but at least he _talks_ to us and tells us what's going on outside of the kitchen. And I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but you two need to get your heads out of your asses and realize that, for better or worse, the only status you have in this messed up religion comes through your husband. You hold him back, you hold yourselves back. Now, you can make this decision for yourselves, or, from what Kurt's ben telling us, somebody will make it for you."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Quinn asks, recovering her composure after standing slack-jawed in surprise over Mercedes' outburst.

"What it means is that they've been pushing Finn _very hard_ to man up and just _tell_ you that he's taking a new wife, and probably getting promoted out of Lima. And from what Kurt says, Finn's just about ready to pull the trigger, so you need to get ready for it and stop giving us grief about taking control over our lives."

"Finn _wouldn't do that_ to us..." Quinn starts, only to be interrupted by Kurt loudly announcing that he and Finn are coming to the kitchen, and doesn't dinner smell wonderful?

And then it's all happy faces and complements on the meal for the rest of the evening, although they do drink an apple-juice toast to Kurt's official announcement about bringing in a third wife.

There's no chance for Rachel to follow up with Mercedes or Tina about what was said earlier before they leave, although Tina and Mercedes both give her extra-strong hugs, and whisper to her that it'll be alright. Tuesday is Quinn's night with Finn, and though Quinn tries to make excuses to stay and talk to Rachel, Finn's uncharacteristically frisky, and boorish about it, so Rachel finishes the cleaning and dishes by herself.

Just before midnight she sneaks a shot from the brown bottle and stares out at the empty house, wondering what it'd be like with a stranger living among them.


	6. Once and Again

6. Once and Again

Buried in Rachel's pile of Venus Flu documents and news reports is a pages-long email printout, one of the last she received before the Internet went dark. She didn't think much of the email when she first read it, but as the years have gone by she's found herself returning to page through it more and more, especially on difficult nights like this one.

Tonight she rummages through her closet, pushing books and papers aside until she finds it and falls back into her bed to read.

Hello.

My name is Sara D'Agistino, and I was a graduate researcher studying epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University. I am sending this email to every list server I can find, as my last act as an academic, to pass on what I know and believe to be true about the Venus Plague.

The most important thing I know about Venus is that it is simply a virus, not a sign from God, or punishment for mankind, or any other kind of supernatural event. Venus is far more lethal and contagious than most illnesses Americans have seen in the 21st century, but its lethality is on par with Spanish Influenza, or smallpox, or half a dozen other diseases that humanity has faced before. Venus also has a relatively unusual gestation period that we were not expecting, and it's that gestation period that allowed Venus to kill so many. But even that is not without precedent; in fact, the pathology of Venus resembles nothing so much as an airborne, extra-lethal version of rabies.

Of course, in addition to its extreme lethality, the plague has two aspects that have made its effects so catastrophic. Venus is highly sex-selective, which is unusual but, again, not completely unheard of. And Venus causes widespread sterility in many of its female survivors.

Furthermore, one troubling fact that has not been reported in the remaining news outlets is that Venus continues to be lethal to children born after the plague, especially boys. In fact, although we only have very preliminary data on this, it appears that Venus may be deadly even to children conceived by two parents who both survived the plague. This suggests one of two things: either the immunity shown by the remaining population is environmental, rather than hereditary, or the virus is mutating too quickly for any existing hereditary immunity to offer significant protection.

We do not know how long this will continue, although it could potentially be for generations.

But because we know that Venus is merely a virus, we know through past example what will happen to populations exposed to it, even without any kind of effective medical treatment. Basic evolution tells us that some members of the population will eventually develop a broad hereditary immunity to the disease and related mutations, one that can be passed on to their children, and their children's children. And when such an immunity appears, it will spread rapidly, as the plague kills those who are not immune and passes by those who are.

No matter what anyone tells you about Venus, know this: things will return to normal, someday. Someday your sons will have the same chance at life as your daughters, just the way it was before the plague.

Currently, news reports and rumors are starting to confirm what simple logical deduction suggests: that a population with a relatively small number of men and a large number of potentially infertile women will turn to polygamy, probably on a far larger scale than has ever seen before in human history.

Polygamy in and of itself might not be troubling, but in combination with the societal collapse that the plague has brought, I suspect it may destroy what we think of as modernity, and all its hallmarks, especially equality between the sexes. And because of that, I fear for what our society might become. Prior to Venus, many cultures already had a propensity to treat women as chattel; how much worse will it get when women - especially infertile women - are so much more numerous than the remaining men?

I think we will all find out together over the next few years.

In many ways, I blame myself and my peers in the medical community for this - had we been foreseen the second stage of Venus, had we been able to find a cure, or a vaccine, or a preventative in time, tens of millions would still be alive, society would still be functional. And, speaking for myself, my husband and my son would still be alive.

Instead, I face the same chaos as everyone else does, with no easy answers on how to fix it or make things more bearable.

All I can do now is say one more time that THIS SHALL PASS. A million crackpots have spilled from the woodwork to bend the chaos of Venus to their own ends, and the scientific truth about the plague may become difficult to speak of in public, or just one more myth among many. But before that happens, know this - Nature will once more right that which is out of balance, and things will someday be as they were before the plague.

Biologically, at least. Socially, I can only hope and pray that we can find our way back to what we once had as a people, and that those with the memory of what we once were will somehow survive until Venus has left us entirely.

Endure.

You must endure.

I am sorry it has come to this, and I love all of you: those who Venus has taken from us, those who have to stay and live with the world Venus has created, and those yet to come, who will someday restore what has been taken from us.

Goodbye,

Sara


	7. Clean Hands

7. Clean Hands

Will Schuester was a different man after the plague than before it.

They'd all changed, of course, but the man Rachel remembers before the plague was a man with a dream - even if he had a halting, imperfect idea of what that dream was, or how to go about achieving it. In some alternate reality where he'd gotten to be coach of the glee club for more than one year, and had time to practice and polish the raw talent at McKinley, she suspects he could have taken the club all the way to Nationals. Whether that would have really given Will what he wanted was an open question, but Rachel would have at least liked to see him given the chance.

Instead, the part of Will that drove him to create New Directions was just... gone, after the Flu. He was still a good man - decent, competent, hardworking, trustworthy - but he was a man who simply accepted the fate that life dealt him, rather than trying to change it.

Which, oddly enough, made him an ideal partner for Rachel in her work with the Wives' Organizing Committee. As quartermaster of the Lima rail depot, Will was nominally her supervisor, able to veto her plans and requests and push her into doing what he thought was best, but practically speaking he never did, and was instead content to go along with however she wanted to drive things.

At today's sync-up meeting, he's professional as ever, outlining what supplies they have on hand, what they're short of, helping Rachel come up with ideas on how to arbitrage and build and grow to Lima's best advantage. In fact, there's absolutely no personal chit-chat until the end of the meeting, when Rachel asks him about Emma.

"How's she doing, Mr. Shue? One of her good weeks, or...?"

Will shrugs and gives a wan grin. "Not the best ever, but it's been worse. The handwashing, the cleaning... it's not that she ever really stops doing any of it, but when it's good at least she's not so wrapped up in it that she's not aware of other people, me, Terri, her daughter. When it's really bad, that's all she can do; if it wasn't for Terri making her sit down and eat I'm afraid she'd starve to death. I mean, it wasn't even that she got particularly ill from the Flu, but the idea that it was everywhere, and couldn't be escaped or washed away... I think part of her just snapped."

"I'm so, so sorry, Will... but at least you have Terri."

He nods. "Yeah, she's been great. Of course, the stress of taking care of Emma and the kids gets to her sometimes, and I think she still resents the fact that she's the second wife, after we remarried. Sometimes... she takes her frustrations out on Emma - I once found her knocking mud off her shoes in the living room, just so Emma would obsess more about cleaning..." Will shakes his head and smiles again. "But I'm sure that was just a one-time thing, after a hard day. By and large they're really good together."

Rachel reaches across the table to squeeze his hand. "I'm... glad, Will. And you know if there's anything Quinn or Finn or I can do..."

He nods and smiles and squeezes her hand back. "I know, and thanks, Rach." He stands and stretches and starts gathering his papers, but then stops and smacks his forehead gently. "Oh, hey, I almost forgot... I'm supposed to tell you that people have been seeing scavengers at the scrap yard on the north side of town lately. Freelancers, not any of our work crews. Since you've been organizing that side of things..."

Rachel frowns, and nods. Scrap yards and dumps had become important resources since the plague, full of broken machinery that had once been considered too much hassle to repair, but was now much easier to fix than to build from scratch. Still, the work was filthy and difficult and degrading, and she was proud of the fact that nobody in Lima had to resort to such work if they didn't want to. "It's probably some out-of-towners trying to get by, but we've got more than enough factory and farm work... I'll swing by this afternoon and try to talk to them."

"Thanks, Rachel. See you around, best to Finn and Quinn and the kids." Will throws his satchel over his shoulder and heads out the door, leaving Rachel to finish the rest of her paperwork before heading out for the evening.

Late that afternoon she pedals her bicycle up a gentle slope towards an old auto yard, standing on the pedals and grunting with exertion with each stroke. It's one of Kurt's bikes, made after the plague - robust and reliable, but its solid steel frame and comparative lack of gears make it a huge hassle to pedal, especially for someone as petite as Rachel. Still, she has to smile through her efforts - once upon a time she had to work out on the elliptical machine every day to get the kind of body that the bike and a post-plague diet have given her for free.

At the far edge of the yard she spots them, standing besides a small pull-cart full of particularly shiny scrap and not-that-badly-damaged machinery. There's two of them, heads together, one of them occasionally gesturing out at the rest of the yard and pointing, dressed in dirty coveralls, thick gloves, and heavy scarves that wrap around their hair and mouths and noses, leaving only their eyes visible. From this distance she can't tell if they're women or men.

"Excuse me? Excuse me!" Rachel yells from the road side, and hops of her bike and starts walking towards them. "My name is Rachel Hudson, and I'm head of the Wives' Organizing Committee for Lima... If you're looking for work, I think I can help find you some, instead of this..."

One of the figures mumbles something that Rachel can't make out through the scarf, and the other one peels off gloves before unwrapping its headscarf, freeing a mane of blonde hair, a pair of blue eyes, and a wide, innocent smile.

"Rachel?" she calls, in a voice that makes Rachel pause, before running closer to the pair, smiling in disbelief.

"Brittany?"


	8. The Garbagewomen

8. The Garbagewomen

Brittany starts to move towards her, but before she can move more than a few steps Santana - and of course it's Santana with her - is between them, staring Rachel down with cold, dark eyes. "Hey, Rachel."

"Santana, hi! My god, it's been so long, how are you? We were wondering..." But the sentence dies there in Rachel's throat, as she realizes she hasn't been wondering about Brittany and Santana, hasn't even thought of them in years.

And, from the looks of things, the years have not been kind to either of them. They're thin, for one thing - everybody's skinny these days, but Rachel's learned to tell the difference between people who've been eating every day (even if it's just potatoes) and people who've only been eating every few days. Brittany and Santana look like the latter.

Their skin looks like the dirt's been ground in, and Rachel's certain that it's been weeks, if not months, since they've had a decent wash - she can imagine the smell from here. And now that she has a chance to look closer, she can see the scars - Brittany looks like she's missing part of an ear, and there's an ugly white line that runs from above Santana's eye down to her cheek.

Only the expressions haven't really changed since high school - Brittany still looks vaguely confused, if generally happy, and Santana still looks like she'd let you burn alive as soon as throw a bucket of water on you.

But the possibility of Santana actually watching you burn alive never seemed so plausible back then as it does now.

"Get a good look, Berry?" Santana asks, pulling Rachel back into the moment.

"Santana... Brittany, are you two ok? You look... I'm sorry, you look terrible! Come on back with me to the house, Quinn would love to see you, we've got food and hot water and clean clothes and a spare room..."

"We're fine here, thanks. What do you want?"

"Rachel, it's really good to see you again..." Brittany starts, only to be interrupted by Santana.

"Brit, get back to the yard and grab those bike chains we saw. Go on." Brittany's smile wilts, and she gives Rachel a sad little wave before turning and heading back to the depths of the scrap yard.

"Santana, I just..."

"We're fine by ourselves, Rachel. We don't want to go with you. What is it you want with us? You were saying something before you even knew it was us; just tell me what you wanted to say and we can both get out of this freaking junk yard."

"Well, I, uh..." Rachel clears her throat, and starts again. "What I was trying to say was that we don't, I mean Lima doesn't really need people going through our scrap like this. We've got other work that needs doing, factory and farm stuff - it doesn't matter whether it's you or not, Santana, we can take just about every able-bodied person in and give them food and a place to stay. You don't have to sort through old trash. And I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, but I sort of consider this community property now. We'll go through it in our own time to take out what's useful, we'd rather not have strangers picking through it, ok?"

Santana nods. "Ok, I understand. Here's what we'll do. We're not interested in any work you've got, and we're not interested in any work camps or dorms or any other accommodations you have available. You say it's your dump, and that's fine, we'll leave it be. But this stuff -" she waves her hand at the cart "- we've already put in a day's work collecting, and it's not like you had any signs up about it. So we'll take what we've got, and leave, and not come back, alright? And that'll be the end of it."

Rachel stares for a moment, open-mouthed, then shakes her head to clear it. "Well, I guess that's acceptable... but I... Santana, what happened to you two? Where have you been? I don't care about the scrap, it's just... junk, but we used to be friends! Can't we just talk about this like sane, normal adults?"

Santana glances back into the yard, where Britanny's disappeared and still shows no signs of reappearing, and sighs. "Sure, I guess. Brittany and I, we've been freelancing for the past few months... maybe a year by now, I don't know. A lot of the farm towns between here and Chicago haven't really had time to go through this stuff, so we pick out the better items and sell it to the repair guys and the refurbishers. It's enough to keep us going, and it's better than..." she stops, and looks away at the horizon, where the sun's less than an hour from setting. "Anyway, it's ok. How've... how have you been? How're Quinn and Mr. Shue doing?"

"We're fine," Rachel says, relaxing a bit. "I don't know if you remember, but Finn and I brought Quinn into our marriage... we've had two more kids since then, and Beth's growing like a weed, you should see her... and, oh, Mr. Shue's fine, and Kurt and Tina and Mercedes got married, they have four kids..."

Santana snorts laughter. "_Kurt_? Kurt's married to two women? Why the hell would any of them agree to - " she pauses. "Well, actually, I guess it makes sense. Poor bitches... that's got to be a special kind of hell they're going through."

"Well, actually, they're doing fairly well, I think. Kurt's got his own factory and repair shop, he's respected and people... well, I mean, it's not a problem, him being the way he is..."

"As long as he covers it up with wives and kids, sure."

"It's... it's all we can really _do_, Santana." Rachel shakes her head. "Anyway, it's not like you and Brittany have been around. Where did the two of you _go_, anyway? You said Chicago, did you make it out there? What was it like? We haven't really heard that much news about the outside, except what comes into town on the train."

"Chicago? What was _Chicago_ like? You're asking me - " and Santana breaks out in a coughing fit that stretches out into a long, hacking series of gasps, while Rachel runs back to her bike for a water bottle. Santana gratefully accepts, downing half the bottle and holding it back out to Rachel.

She shakes her head. "It's ok... keep it. For Brittany, when she gets back."

Santana nods, standing bent over with hands on her knees, panting slightly for breath for a few moments or so before she looks up at Rachel again.

"You... really don't know, do you? What happened in Chicago, what's been happening around all the big cities. It just hasn't reached you, has it?"

"No, but I want to know, Santana. Tell me."

Santana takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, and exhales before looking straight at Rachel and starting to talk.

"We decided to leave Lima for good maybe two years after the plague. The religion crap... We could tell there wasn't going to be a place for us in town, not together, not without having to be married to some guy and pretend like we were straight, like back in high school. And I lost just about everybody else I cared about in the plague, I wasn't going to let anything come between me and Brittany."

"So we walked west, on the back roads. I don't know, I thought it might be safer, and easier to avoid people - we didn't know what it was like outside of town, but I guess I thought it would look like Zombieland or something. But it was fine, just mostly empty. A few of the farms we passed let us crash in their barns in exchange for work, so we did ok. And once we got into Indiana, we started to hear about Chicago, how it was closer to how things used to be than out in the country, how it wasn't all about religion or anything... and Brittany and I always used to talk about going somewhere big after school. So, yeah, I figured Chicago wasn't LA or New York, but it'd do."

"And Chicago, it was... it was good, for a while. I mean, it wasn't really Chicago, for one thing - nobody lived in the old town anymore, because there wasn't any food coming in. But a lot of the outer suburbs around town had been taken over by women's militias, and they did a reasonably good job of keeping the peace and keeping everybody fed. I heard it was worse right after the plague, there were battles over land and supplies, a lot of people died... but by the time we got there things were more or less settled, and they had more work to do than people to do it."

"Brittany and I ended up in a a one-bedroom apartment in this old farmhouse south of town. And... that was it, really. We worked like crazy during the day, and at night we'd sometimes hang out with other women from the surrounding farms... but mostly we just spent time with each other. We used to sing to each other all night... And two, three years in, after the harvest was done, I asked Brittany to marry me and she said yes and we found an ex-judge willing to do it. And that was great." Santana gives the first smile Rachel's seen from her today, but it's a fleeting thing, vanishing as soon as she continues.

"We started hearing about the NLDS moving in from the west about two years ago, just rumors at first - they tried to set up one of their handout shops in one of the far west suburbs of Chicago, but they didn't get many takers and they eventually left. And then it was all about how they were moving around Chicago, setting up in Peoria and Champaign and the rest of the area around the city, and how they were going to invade any day."

"So the militia leaders started to get paranoid, started drafting everybody into weekend drills, training us to fight and shoot and work in units... I thought it was nuts, that nobody would attack, but the people in charge had been through shit we hadn't. Besides, it wasn't that much harder than Cheerios practice, back in the day."

"Sounds like Coach Sylvester would have been right at home," Rachel jokes, but the smile freezes on her face when she sees Santana's dead-eyed expression.

"Sue Sylvester was there, actually. Not in our area, but she got to Chicago before we did, and rose pretty high in the ranks - colonel or general or something equivalent, I guess. Everybody had heard of her army by then, 'Sylvester's Sabers'. She was one of the first to..." Santana shakes her head. "I'm getting ahead of myself."

"The NLDS attacked in the fall, two years ago, just as harvest was starting. Aurora, Illinois - they just attacked the one town at first, before anybody knew what was going on, before any of the surrounding suburbs could rally in defense or the local militia could even assemble. They had jeeps, tanks... I don't know where they got the fuel for them, but we heard later it was all over within an hour. They captured the town leaders and had guns on the streets, and nobody could do anything. Some people managed to escape, that's how we heard about it."

"It was chaos, in all the rest of the suburbs - everybody was torn between trying to get in the crops and preparing for an invasion of their turf. I remember they had us working the fields, harvesting corn with rifles on our backs, just in case anything happened. But nothing did until about a week after the Aurora takeover. I wasn't there to see it, but the NLDS sent in messengers to all the towns around Chicago - something called the women's committee. I guess they thought we wouldn't attack women."

"They gave us an ultimatum - surrender to church rule and accept the religion, or they'd invade within 48 hours."

"There wasn't even any argument about it on our side. Half the people there had already fought and killed for their towns, and nobody was willing to give up without a fight. So we put the harvest on hold, set up defensive positions, and waited."

Santana breaks eye contact to look at the horizon, and brushes her at her face with her sleeve, but her voice remains steady as she looks back at Rachel and continues.

"They came at dawn, much stronger than we ever expected. They had mortars, gas, napalm... they landed helicopters in the center of town and knocked over our command posts like there was nothing there. We thought we were so tough, so brave, and I know I was ready to fight and die, given the chance... but they never gave us the chance. They killed ten, twenty percent of us before we even saw the people we were fighting. And before I had a chance to pull my trigger, we were getting orders to surrender our weapons and turn ourselves in."

"There were groups that didn't surrender. Most of them were put down on the spot with machine guns. A few did better than that. General... Coach Sylvester's people, in Elmhurst, they fell back into old Chicago, hid out there, fought a guerilla campaign for weeks... but they were eventually turned in scavengers in the area, rounded up or shot on sight."

"I guess Brittany and I were lucky that our lieutenant decided to surrender instead of fight. They put us in a containment camp on the edge of town - just tents and razor wire - and we watched everything happen around us."

"They took the food that we'd harvested, and burned what was left in the fields, so even if we managed to break free we'd be dependent on them to make it through the winter. They took the officers, the town leadership, and offered them a choice - they could accept the NLDS religion in a public ceremony, or they could be publicly executed in front of their troops."

"I think it was about half and half, who chose to convert and who chose to die. I know Coach Sylvester didn't convert, though - I saw her, at the end, cursing the firing squad. It was... you ever see that movie, 'Red Dawn'? Puck used to make me watch it over and over. It was like that, except it was plain English instead of weird Russian writing everywhere, and the people with the guns were dressed like American soldiers. But the line of people getting shot was the same, and they fell down just like in the movie. The only thing the movie didn't show was the work crews digging the trenches and burying the bodies."

"The rest of us, the troops - they didn't offer us that same choice, not immediately. They just made it clear that you could get out by going through the conversion ceremony. Almost nobody went through it at first, but they started cutting rations, started talking up how great it was on the outside. They told us that if we were willing to be married to a godly soldier from the NLDS army, we could have our own house, with electricity and running water. At the time, if they'd promised that Brittany and me could be married to the same guy, I might have taken them up on it... but they knew a lot of the women left in containment were married to each other. They told us that any marriage that wasn't between a man and a woman was invalid, and that anyone in a lesbian relationship would be assigned to entirely different towns."

"More and more women left containment, and the church started hinting that before long we'd have to make the same choice as the officers. The thing is, most of us left had already decided that we'd die before joining, after what they'd done. So it was just a matter of time... but Brittany and me, we got lucky, in a way."

"We used to take walks around the camp, pinkies together, like in high school. There wasn't anything else to do, really. And one of the guards - I never even knew his name - he kept staring at us, more and more, day after day. He was so into it... I mean, a lot of guys used to like to watch Brit and me make out, before the plague, but it was a serious kink for this guy. So every day we'd put on a little more of a show, walked a little closer, touched a little more, stopped more frequently in front of his post."

"And after a while he started talking to us, asking questions about the two of us, how long we'd been together. We played the creep as much as we could. Told him about the whole cheerleader thing, threesomes, invented crap we'd never come close to doing, and he just ate it up. Finally he arranged to get us through the wire into his barracks one night - we were supposed to do it with him for some extra food, although I think he really just thought we were desperate to do it with a real man, or something like that."

"As soon as we were alone, we beat him unconscious... or worse, I don't know. We dressed up in his spare uniforms, stole some rations from the camp, and made a run for it. We were lucky that they didn't catch up with us - the fields were empty, you could see for miles, and I know they had cars that could chase us down - but either they didn't find out about it until we were too far gone, or they just didn't care."

"We've been running, and scavenging, ever since."

It's only when Santana stops speaking that Rachel feels the cold on her cheeks - she's been crying for the past few minutes, and a soft west wind is evaporating the moisture away.

"Santana, I... I don't know what to say, I didn't know what they were... what anyone was..."

Santana sniffs, shrugs, and turns her head towards the setting sun, which is just touching the horizon. "Yeah... I figured as much. It's not like they'd advertise that stuff to people who're pretty content with the NLDS. It's not an isolated incident, though - we heard from refugees from St. Louis, Detroit, Indianapolis... I don't know. I'm never living in a church-controlled area again, though. As long as we stay on the fringes, we'll probably be alright. That's the plan, anyway..."

Rachel rubs her eyes and looks back at her bike, and the road heading back to town. "Santana... I know you don't want anything to do with us, and I can't blame you, but are you sure you won't come back with us, just for tonight? Just for a hot meal and a bed -"

"No! Jesus, Rachel, just stop, stop -" Santana pauses, and starts again, quieter this time. "We can't go with you, Rachel. If they found out that we escaped, what we did to escape, they'd probably kill us. I can't take that risk. And... and even if they didn't, it's been so long since we were inside... I couldn't bear to bring Brittany somewhere warm and safe and then make her come back with me, out in the cold. We don't have much, Rachel, but we've got each other. And I swore, I swore the night we escaped that I won't ever give that up. They can put a bullet in the back of my head and bury me in a ditch, just like the others, but I'll never leave Brittany and I'll never... I'll never go..."

"Santana..." Brittany's walked up behind Santana, without Rachel even noticing. The taller woman pulls Santana close as she breaks down in sobs, burying her face against Brittany's shoulder. Brittany says nothing, doesn't even look at Rachel, but just strokes Santana's hair and whispers something Rachel can't hear.

Rachel stands there for a moment, opens her mouth to speak, but stops, and stares at Brittany and Santana for a minute, saying nothing as they embrace, heedless of her presence.

Then she turns, and walks back to her bike. She looks back, one last time, at the two women standing together at the edge of a barren field, outlined against the horizon turned violet with twilight, the wind picking up and starting to catch at their hair and clothes.

She rides back into town, alone.


	9. Road to the West

9. Road to the West

She didn't even have to say anything when she got home - one look at her was all Quinn needed to send the kids to another room, sit Rachel down at the table, and pour her a cup of hot tea, with a strong dose from the brown bottle thrown in for good measure.

Quinn doesn't say anything as Rachel tells her about Santana and Brittany, doesn't change expression, just reaches across the table to hold Rachel's hand and waits until the end before sighing and looking down.

"Well, at least they've got each other. I just wish we could have..." She shakes her head, and looks back at Rachel, saying nothing more.

"I didn't know, Quinn. I mean, at services, they've mentioned fighting, they've talked about expanding the church, but I never knew it was like that, I didn't... if I'd known I wouldn't have... at least I don't think I could have..."

Quinn speaks, softly. "I knew."

Rachel looks up at her quickly, in shock, and Quinn shakes her head. "I mean, I didn't know all the details, I didn't know what exactly was happening around the old cities, and I knew nothing about Santana and Brittany, but... I've heard things through my market connections, and figured it might be something like that. I just hoped it wasn't as bad as I thought, and hoped you wouldn't find out."

"Hoped I wouldn't _find out_? Quinn, what's been happening out there is monstrous, it's unconscionable, I couldn't have possibly don't the work I did over the past five years if I'd known -"

"And that's why I didn't _tell you_. Look, you're right, what's happening is terrible. But the work you've been doing, you _need to do it_. There are dozens, maybe hundreds of people who survived after the plague because of what you did, because of the work you did with the church. I wouldn't have made it, Beth wouldn't have made it..."

"But if I'm working with, with the NLDS, it's like I'm _helping_ them, like I'm complicit! I might as well have been firing the gun at Sue Sylvester myself!"

Quinn shakes her head squeezes Rachel's hand, hard. "Rachel, what do you think you could have done? What could you have changed? You heard Santana - even if you'd been there, even if you'd had a gun, you wouldn't have gotten a chance to fight back. If you'd done nothing when they came here to town, we might have starved, or they'd have somebody else - somebody not as good as you - doing your job. _You_ made the best of a bad situation, and _you_ have nothing to apologize for. It just... it is what it is."

"Quinn, that's not... I can't condone what the church is doing, not now, not that I know..." Rachel trails off, and stares up at the ceiling, blinking back tears. "I've been doing all this, everything, since the plague, because I believed in what I was doing. If it's all a lie, if what the church is doing is hurting and killing people like Brittany and Santana, what am I left with? I can't... I have to _believe_ in something to get through this, otherwise I can't..." Rachel finishes quietly, almost whispering.

Quinn walks around the table, stands next to Rachel and hugs her, holding Rachel's head to her stomach, stroking her hair. "I know. I know you do, sweetie. I don't know what to tell you, except... it worked, for me, to stop believing in the big things and start believing in the little things. After getting kicked out of my house, after the plague, I couldn't believe in a world that was good and kind for everybody, in a God that made everything ok... but I believed we'd get through that first winter, that'd we'd have enough food and heat and it worked, we did it. I believed things would work out, that our group would hang together and work through those first few years, and it did. I believed that Beth and I would be taken care of by someone, and loved, and we were. I believed that we'd be able to make a family together, and keep each other safe and even be a little happy, no matter what was going on in the rest of the world, and we have."

Quinn sits down beside Rachel and holds her face between her hands, looking straight into her eyes.

"These days, what I believe in is our family, yours and mine and Finn's, and I'll do anything to keep it safe. And... I believe in you, Rachel. I don't know how to deal with the world, but you do. And I believe... I know... that no matter what, you'll find a way to do good, and make it better. So believe, or don't believe, whatever you want, because I'm believing in you enough for all of us."

Finn picks that exact moment to walk through the front door, calling out to Rachel and Quinn and the kids. Quinn gives Rachel a quick kiss on the forehead before running out to the living room to greet him, giving Rachel just enough time to wipe her eyes and run her fingers through her hair before doing the same.

Rachel spends the next hour or so in a daze, moving through her dinner chores like setting the table without thinking of anything, except for brief flashes of memory of what Santana had told her, images of guns and fires and tents and razor wire. Compared to that, the time spent not thinking, just stepping through the routine, is a blessing. And she's able to keep burying herself in routine through dinner, helping the kids cut their food and hearing, but not really following, Finn and Quinn exchange polite chit-chat.

Until she hears a loud exclamation from Quinn, and looks up to see her staring at Finn, open mouthed.

Finn stares calmly at the two of them, and repeats himself. "It's like I said. I've been assigned to Utah for advanced training. I'm leaving next week, you two, and the kids, are following the month after. And when you get there... you'll meet your new sister-wife, Amanda. It's all been arranged."

"And you just... decided this, without consulting us? Moving us halfway across the country, bringing some stranger into our lives, into our goddamn _marriage_, it's just something you announce over dinner?"

Finn looks over at Rachel for support, but she can't help but stare back at him with a stunned, deer-in-the-headlights look. He sighs, and continues. "Come on, Quinn, it's not... it can't be a complete surprise to you. We've been talking about adding a third for months..."

Quinn cuts in. "No, _you've_ been talking about adding a third for months, and I keep telling you we're not ready for it - not now, maybe not ever. Rachel's still trying to get pregnant, she's got work to do here, and I'm still raising an infant, we are _not ready_ to -"

"I'm the one who says when we're ready for things." Finn speaks quietly, but there's something in his tone, in his eyes, that stills Quinn for a moment.

"The church has a need for leaders now, for righteous families that will set an example and help spread the Prophet's word across the whole country. I didn't ask for this, but the bishop told me he thinks I can be a leader in our fight. It is not a choice, it is our duty to expand, to step up and face the burdens of leadership. I let your fears and concerns hold us back for too long. This is what we are called on to do, and this is what we are doing."

"_Duty. Burden._" Quinn spits out. "You're just repeating what they told you, aren't you? You even _sound_ like them, these days. And yes, it's a huge _burden_ to marry some... how old is this girl, Finn? And who is this new 'sister' of ours, anyway?"

Finn pauses. "Amanda is the niece of one of a member of the Quorum of Seventy. I've talked to her on the phone more than once, and she's a good woman, very devout and dedicated to the church. She's really mature for her age -"

"What _is_ her age, Finn?" Quinn's voice is low now, and ice cold.

"Sixteen... seventeen by May."

"Sixteen. _Sixteen_. You're telling us you're... we're..." Quinn slams the table, once, hard, so that the children stare at her, wide-eyed, and the baby starts to cry until Rachel picks it up and starts shushing it. Quinn looks over at Rachel and shakes her head as she sees the blank, lost expression on Rachel's face.

"Fine." Quinn stands up, and stares straight at Finn. "You told us your pitch, I get it. We've heard you. But hear me on this. This is _not over_." She walks out of the dining room, up the stairs, and finally slams the door to her bedroom.

After a moment, Finn turns back to the kids and starts trying to comfort them, telling them that grown-ups have silly arguments sometimes and telling them how much fun they'll have in Utah, as Rachel continues to quiet the baby and make sure everybody finishes their meal.

Quinn doesn't come out for the rest of the evening, leaving Rachel to do all the chores, and get the kids to bed - though Finn helps out, for once. She'd almost prefer he didn't, because when she's not buried in make-work, the things at the back of her mind push back even harder, battles in small towns matched with the wide horizon of the Utah desert, and a sixteen year-old girl with red hair like burning fields, waiting at the train station in a wedding dress, prison camps stretching out behind her in the distance...

She's in such a daze she doesn't realize she's in bed with Finn until he's next to her, reaching his arm over her and calling her name. She shakes her head and looks over at him.

"I'm sorry, it's just been a long day. What did you say?"

"I was just saying... are you ok with this? With Utah and Amanda? I knew Quinn wasn't going to take it well, but you didn't say anything. I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to talk to you about it before, but... you understand, don't you? That this is the best thing for our family, for the church? We'll be bigger, and stronger, with more people, more help for you, more kids... It's good, isn't it?"

She's surprised to hear more than a little questioning in his voice - it's not the lecturing tone he had with Quinn earlier tonight, and it's not the preacher's voice that carries throughout the church on Sundays when he gives sermons.

It would be easier if he was just _telling_ her to accept it, not asking for her approval, not today, not like this.

"I don't know. I really don't. I like our family the way it is, and I thought our life here was about as good as we could hope for. Moving out there, it's good for your career, it's good for the church, I just don't know if it's good for _us_." She raises up on an elbow and looks straight at him. "Finn did... do _you_ want this, or is it something _they_ want you to want?"

He turns over and sighs, staring up at the ceiling. After a moment he speaks. "I think it'll be good for me to be outside of Lima, learning new stuff, doing more for..."

She sits up further, leaning over him, hand on his chest. "That's not what I asked. What do _you_ want?"

He sits up, and takes her hand in both of his. "I want to do the right thing, Rach. The right thing for you, the right thing for Quinn and the kids and... everybody. And doing what the church wants _is_ the right thing, right? It's been the right thing ever since they came, ever since the plague. We're alive because of them, and I believe... I believe in the church, in the Prophet Henrickson, all of it. It's the best way to keep us all safe."

"Finn, I - "

He interrupts before she can finish the thought. "Besides," he says quietly, "What other choice do we have?"

She sits there a moment, looking at him as he's looking down at his hands, saying nothing. What starts out as a question becomes a statement by the time she finishes. "There's not anywhere else to go, is there?"

He shakes his head, still not looking at her. "I'm not supposed to say anything until it can officially be announced, but... the army's made it all the way to Boston, and Seattle, and up to Montreal. All the militias are beaten. Just about anywhere there's roads, or rail lines, there's the church. The new... territories, they need people with experience to go out and administer them. That's why they want me out there, they'll probably send us off to the west coast once I'm ordained as a bishop."

And in her mind's eye, she sees them - after the fires are put out, and the prison camps are struck and the bodies are buried and the trenches are filled, a train stops and she and Finn and Quinn and a mob of smiling wives and children get out, ready to bring the NLDS order to the newly conquered land.

The only other option is to be like Brittany and Santana, standing alone on an empty horizon, walking away to some nowhere place as twilight falls.

And she realizes, now, what Santana meant - that you can stay on the fringe if you're already there, but to lead your own family out there, away from someplace warm and safe, into the cold, isn't an option.

Tears well up in her eyes, but she pushes the words out. "You'd... be good, Finn. You've... done a good job at taking care of us, taking care of the town, and you'd make a good bishop. I - " she swallows against the lie. "I believe in you, and the church. It's the right thing to do."

He looks up at her then, and she gives him a brave smile. If he sees the tears, they don't stop him - he says nothing, but leans across and kisses her, and then pushes her down on the bed, hands running over her body, moving against her bare skin.

At first she's stock-still against him, unable to let go of the cold dread that the day has put in the pit of her stomach. But she soon finds herself moving against him, faster and more desperately, trying to push away from what they've become, back towards the distant memory of just the two of them in the early days, alone in the dark, comforting each other against the horror of the past, innocent and ignorant what's to come.

When it finally happens, the rush of pleasure is remote and small, but it carries with it the barest hint of the boy Finn used to be, and the girl she used to be, and for a moment, it's almost enough.

Almost.


	10. Yearning for Zion

10. Yearning for Zion

The accommodations for passengers on the train are not great; for seven days Rachel and Quinn and the kids are squeezed into an 8-by-8-foot compartment that has two fold-down bunk beds and shares a pair of bathrooms with the rest of the passenger car.

And even this much is relative luxury, compared to the other passengers riding in coach, or squeezed in between cargo in the freight cars.

Tonight it's late, and the train's stopped in some random town somewhere on the Great Plains. Rachel looks out through the window right above to her pillow at rolling prairie, silver in the moonlight, with waves of grass dancing to a steady wind that occasionally gusts, rocking the car for a moment.

All the kids are asleep in the top bunk; Rachel's on the bottom, and next to her lies Quinn, whose sleeping form has become a familiar part of Rachel's nights over the past month or so. The night after Finn's announcement - a night that Finn and Quinn should have been together - Quinn had simply shown up in Rachel's room and told Finn that he should feel free to sleep in her bed; she just wouldn't be in it.

She'd been in Rachel's room every night until Finn left town a week later, sometimes bringing the brown bottle up with her so that she could drink and complain about, in her words, their "ass of a husband." The day Finn left, she'd refused to see him off at the train station, instead telling him that he hoped Finn and his new bride would be very happy together, because it'd be a long time before he'd be with Quinn again. It'd hurt Finn's feelings to hear - Rachel could see it in his eyes, and she did the best she could to reassure him that it was only temporary, and she'd work on Quinn to calm down over the next month.

But, she has to admit to herself, it's been nice to have a break from the marriage, and to have someone to talk to every evening, rather than being expected to hide herself away every other night for Finn and Quinn's sake. Not, she reminds herself, that the talk has come to all that much - Rachel hasn't been terribly enthusiastic about Quinn's proposal to cut Finn off from sex permanently, and even Quinn doesn't seem too sure of what they'd do beyond that, if they did pull the trigger.

In fact, most of the talking has been entirely Quinn's. Rachel seems more content lately to sit back and watch her world change around her, and ponder.

Her role in the Lima Wives' Organizing Committee had passed on quickly to Terri Schuester, who seemed more than ready to run with it. Within the space of a week Rachel had gone from being one of the most indispensable people in town to a fifth wheel, completely outside the loop.

In earlier days it might have shaken her faith to see how quickly she could be replaced and how superflous she was to what was supposed to be her life's work... but these days Rachel was more content to shrug her shoulders, and get on with helping Quinn figure out what they could and couldn't take with them to Utah.

They'd taken some time off from packing to go to the Hummels' wedding, Kurt looking sharp in a white tuxedo he'd gotten from God-knows-where. The new wife, Angela, had looked radiant in her new gown; Tina's gown wasn't new, but she was smiling at least as big anyone else that day. But it was Mercedes Rachel had pulled aside during the reception, to let her know about seeing Santana and Brittany. Mercedes had said little afterwards, just offered up a quick prayer and shared a toast with Rachel, from a small flask Mercedes pulled out of her purse, to Brittany and Santana's continuing freedom and health.

As Rachel leans against the far wall of the compartment, and moves herself up onto her elbows so she can see better through the window, she feels some queasiness in her stomach, followed a few moments later by a burp that still tastes like the low-grade beef the train had offered for dinner that night.

Of course, she'd be feeling the same way no matter what they'd served. She rubs her hand against her stomach, which feels bigger than ever, though it'll still be months before she starts showing properly.

For once she hadn't been counting the days until her period was supposed to show - she'd been too busy with packing in the weeks after Finn left to think about anything else. But something began to gnaw at her, an absence she wasn't even aware of until one morning she found herself running to the bathroom, barely winning in a race against a sudden bout of nausea. Looking in the mirror afterwards, rinsing her mouth out, she'd realized, known for sure what was happening - the doctor's visit a few days later was almost a formality.

The more days go by, the more certain she is that it's a girl.

With a jolt the train starts moving again, startling Quinn just enough so that she rolls over and mutters something unintelligible. Rachel says nothing, just stays where she is and watches the landscape outside pick up speed, then darken to near invisibility as the moon moves behind a cloud.

"It's a long journey yet," she tells the baby, whispering so softly even Quinn wouldn't be able to hear.

"In fact, we don't know how long it will take to get there," she continues, laying back on her back and looking up at the ceiling, invisible in the darkness. "It could be dozens, hundreds of years, maybe. And we can't really steer a course on how to get there... or only a very little, no matter how hard we try, or how desperately we want to."

"We'll ride the train until it takes us where we want to go - to a better place, where life is more than about crops and scrap and fighting wars in distant places, and love is all that brings people together, and nothing ever keeps them apart."

There's another burp, and Rachel snorts softly, and smiles. "Don't believe me? It's ok, little one, I'll believe enough for both of us." She burrows down into the blankets a bit more, spooning against Quinn, feeling herself get warm and drowsy.

"I'll hope enough for all of us."

And the train rolls on into the darkness, and Rachel gradually sleeps, and dreams of a better, brighter world.

**End.**


	11. Author's Note

11. Author's note

I need to start with the disclaimer that the NLDS I've described here is not meant to represent or criticize any real-world religion - not the current LDS church, which has moved well beyond polygamy (as my Mormon friends are more than happy to remind me) and not even the "Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints" church, which, whatever issues it may have, doesn't seem to believe in the kind of expansionist theocracy that the NLDS does.

That said, a brief explanation of why I ended up moving the Glee characters into a world that's basically a mash-up of _Big Love_, _The Handmaid's Tale_, and _Y The Last Man_.

Essentially, I wanted to focus on Rachel and Quinn - there's a lot of good Faberry fic out there, but personally I've just never bought them as being in a sexual relationship - they just come across as way too straight for me. (Just my opinion, please don't throw rocks!) That said, they have great complimentary chemistry, and I wanted to see where that would go in a relationship that wasn't romantic, but was a lot more intimate than any kind of BFF situation we're likely to see in the "real" world. That suggested the kind of woman-to-woman relationship that _Big Love_ does so well, and once I started thinking about how to get Rachel and Quinn in that kind of relationship, the rest of it just grew from there.

In fact, it may have grown _too_ much - the world-building stuff might be somewhat overwhelming for people who just wanted to see the glee characters do stuff together, although a lot of it was necessary to make the scenario - and the characters' situations - plausible. That said, making the world bigger gave me more opportunity to bring in more characters - including a Brittana setup that I really like. (And, of course, I hope y'all found any of the character stuff at least somewhat worthwhile!)

At any rate, thanks much to everyone who read through this far; feedback, critiques, etc. are always welcome and appreciated. Cheers!


End file.
